


Backwards

by Talullah



Series: Westernesse [16]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/pseuds/Talullah
Summary: Almiel receives a gift from her niece, Ancalimë.
Series: Westernesse [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/296957
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Legendarium Ladies April 2020





	Backwards

**Author's Note:**

> [Legendarium Ladies April - April 1st](https://legendariumladiesapril.tumblr.com/post/614191712762462208/legendarium-ladies-april-prompts-for-april-01).  
>  **General Prompt: Metaception - Women About Women**  
>  **Picture Prompt: Through the Looking-Glass by[lexilainephoto](https://www.instagram.com/lexilainephoto/)**  
>   
>  **Poetry Prompt: Backwards, by Warsan Shire (excerpt)**  
>  _I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,  
>  you won’t be able to see beyond it._
> 
> _You won’t be able to see beyond it,  
>  I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love._
> 
> Although the piece mentions the death of Erendis, I didn't mark it with major character death because Erendis is not a major character (in canon).

**Andunië, 985 SA**

Almiel sits by her window, with a book forgotten in her hands, acutely aware of the large wooden box in the middle of the room, though she choses to concentrate on the flaming sky and sea in front of her eyes. 

She smiles at the thought of its contents. She wants to believe that Ancalimë, that difficult child she once had tried to love from afar, did not destroy any of Erendis’ legacy. It is true that it hurt her when Erendis shut herself off in Emerië, forsaking their friendship, but she still suffered, so many years later, at the death of her friend. And a friend Almiel was - she sent so many letters in the first years of Erendis’s self-imposed exile, and even a few of her manuscripts, as Erendis was the only person that she had ever shown her writing. But Erendis never replied to any of the letters or sent any notice of acknowledgment. 

Ailinel, always hard, had told her then to forget about their sister-in-law. Even to pray that with her weaker blood she would die soon so that their brother could remarry. Almiel pretended to listen but kept sending Erendis a letter every Erukyermë, as well as a toy and new dress for Ancalimë. 

Now, Almiel finds in her niece’s gesture of sending her her mother’s papers a sort of acknowledgement for all the years that she refused to forget about her. And she smiles. She has distanced herself from the world, but its echoes still reach her in her home in Andunië and she knows life has not grown easier on her niece. 

When the flames die in the clouds, and the sea and sky darken to a rich, deep blue, she feels a pang of hunger. Her hands and feet are cold but when she rises up, she still moves with the agility of her younger self and she is glad for it. As she passes the box, on her way to the kitchen, where Maryam probably already has warm soup waiting for her, she caresses the engraved wood. 

Inside are the poems of her sister-in-law, the woman who called her little sister, even if Almiel was forty years her senior; who always encouraged her to find her own way, and for that, gained the enmity of Ailinel, who always had a master-plan to command the lives of everyone she loved. 

She will open the box tomorrow. Or maybe later, even. For now, she needs to eat. And she needs to savour the sweet memories of her long-lost friend, and unwind the sorrow of knowing her dead, without the chance of ever saying good-bye, before touching her things. 

\---- 

On the third day, after lunch, Almiel lies on her bed for her nap, but she finds no adequate position to lay. Her movements may still be elastic, but there’s a pain in one side of her hip that is not pleasant, not at all. She stares at the ceiling but she knows that it’s not the pain - her hip muscles have been giving her trouble for almost a decade now. It is time. She stretches, blinks, tries to turn to her side and sleep, but it is time. 

She sits on the textured rug, runs her fingers through the brightly couloured wool. It is wool from Emerië, but not a gift from Erendis. She finds the small bronze key in the envelope that came with the box, with no note from Ancalimë, and plays with it in her fingers for a moment, observing the fine craftsmanship. Perhaps it’s one of her brother’s elvish gifts. It certainly is different. She touches the key to the lock and it slides in easily, almost turning by itself. 

Inside there is a white dress, yellowed by time. Erendis’s favourite, she remembers, caressing the worn lace. Beneath it there are several bundles of parchment neatly tied with ribbons, and also many sheets of that fine paper they make down in Nindamos. Erendis might have not liked her husband’s travelling but she did not refuse the Elvish invention. Almiel enjoys the scents coming from the box, lets her eye roam through the fragments of writing she glimpses in Erendis’s nervous, fragile, calligraphy. 

She remembers the first poem her sister-in-law ever shared with her. At the time, it made Almiel’s eyes sting, for it was about unrequited love, the love Erendis, then still pining for Aldarion and Aldarion still unaware of her beauty and wit. No names had been said but Almiel had understood everything so well… 

She takes out the first bundle. As she unties the ribbon, a note on a small square of paper falls on her lap. A different handwriting, two dates. The other bundles seem to have the same organization. No letter was sent to her but she knows this is her niece’s handwriting and she is happy that Ancalimë took the time herself to put order in her mother’s papers and to send them to her old aunt. She may be hard, because of the world, but Ancalimë has a beating heart in her chest, warm and living, just like her mother. 

Almiel spends the afternoon reading, reading until it’s dark and Maryam has long left for her own house. She does not want to leave the papers, but she must and and sleep, for she is weary in her body and in her heart. So much pain and so much joy in her sister-in-law’s work. She, herself, has always been glad to be a historian. No originalities for her, no exposing the guts and blood and tears and laughter for everyone to see. But as Almiel slips into her cold bed, despite the late hour and her state of exhaustion, she cannot sleep. 

A sliver of cool moonlight hitting her eyes, her feet too cold, the annoying feeling that she should have washed her hair, and mostly, all the words, the myriads of words beautiful and ugly but never feeble that Erendis sends from the grave, keep her awake. She is not aware of falling asleep, until she awakes with a start in the dark room. The moon is gone and it’s cold but she rises from the bed, bare feet on the floor. She dreamt, she saw Erendis old and grey but still beautiful, and she was wearing the white dress, walking into the water, making peace with Uinen. The Lady held her in her arms, then vanished into the greenish blue and Erendis was left there, floating, now young and lithe, hair dark as ravens wings, dancing in the water, not for Aldarion, not for Uinen, but for herself. 

Almiel wiped the tears streaming down her face, and even in the dark she hastily found what she looked for in her desk - paper, pen, ink. It would be a blotted mess but she had to pour out the elegy, the love letter, the song that rang in her ears. 

I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love,  
you won’t be able to see beyond it.  
You won’t be able to see beyond it,  
I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love. 

She almost crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fireplace. She almost ripped the page and burned the shreds. She almost held the words to herself. She was no poet. Erendis was. But she wrote it, and she kept it next to her bosom for a long time. There were no more poems inside her, but there were books. Tomorrow she would start a new one, not on the history of a queen that chose a life away from what hurt her dignity, but of the story that might have been, of the life of the greatest poetess ever born to Elenna. 

**Finis  
April 2020**


End file.
